I got home this evening to find this ghoulish sight, the handiwork of Ms. LuMena. We’re a dark mile from the village center and probably won’t get any tender little mooches for the stew pot, but we’re making the best of it and sacrificing a chicken.

So there’s a certain kind of sky I’ve seen through the years which, while not completely uncommon in the Northeast, happens only occasionally and is somewhat under-represented in New England landscape photography: the Dark Sky Over Sunlit Earth. It almost always occurs as a powerful afternoon storm moves eastward, clearing the western horizon and letting in the slanting rays of the sun.

While it’s mostly a summertime sight, I was moved to pull over in the hills of Colrain this evening as departing rain clouds formed a dark backdrop for sunlight on a stand of birches on the slope below me.

But I was barely out of the car when the patch of sun disappeared, leaving me with just the dark clouds over an unspectacular post-peak landscape:

Without my graduated filters, I blew out the sky trying to get some detail in the unlit trees; I guess that’s what happens when one wanders around without one’s tools.

But then, as I tracked the line of storm clouds southward, one of them dropped its gifts through a low band of slanting light, creating this marvelous surprise way down-valley:

I found this scene dramatic in a way which reminded me of things I’ve seen out west, and was pleased to be where I was for the minute or so that it lasted.

Drove into work this morning in the dark, through mists and fog, to arrive at North Adams, one of the Commonwealth’s smallest cities. Dawn revealed a tableau of sad shops, proud steeples and under-utilized factory buildings:

North Adams was known world-wide as “Tunnel City,” sitting as it does between the infamous Hoosac Tunnel to the east and this shorter tunnel to its west:

An eerie mist drifted from it’s dark maw as the sun struggled to burn through the gray blanket above us:

The Hoosac River runs through town, tamed by an Industrial Age concrete channel:

The Autumn colors make the place look almost hopeful – in fact, the sprawling Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, occupying the old Sprague Electric plant, is a ray of hope, drawing both tourists and stimulus dollars for roadscape improvements:

This afternoon the sun came out, illuminating a scene of ridiculously red maples beneath a deep blue sky:

The day ended warmly, with tee-shirts all around. There won’t be many more like this one until Spring.

Went for a short ride this evening, hoping for a glimpse of the rising nearly-full moon through the swirling clouds of a departing storm.

Well, that didn’t happen; instead the clouds closed in and a cold drizzle began to fall.

I drove on, though, thinking I might catch something different in the gray light.

How’s THIS for “different:”

Yeah, heheh, a black and white photo of a rainbow arching over a blazing sugar maple. Not quite the traditional rendition of such a scene, but I was curious to see how it would look, and rather like the effect.

And just in case you’re not as easily amused as I am, here’s how it actually looked when I took the shot:

It was a really intense rainbow, and not a half bad consolation prize for the moon-shot I missed n the rain.